The Mekeo people are good agriculturists, and their rich soil yields them abundant harvests. Each of their villages consists of a single wide street, with houses on each side. Sometimes the houses are two or three deep, but in this case they are so arranged as to leave a regular street on each side of, and parallel to, the main street. There are usually two mareas, which are generally placed at opposite ends of the village. The marea is the club-house of the men; often it is highly decorated with carved and painted posts and boards and streamers of palm leaves. The marea, which is the equivalent of the erabo, or eramo, of the Gulf, the kwod of Torres Straits, and the dubu of further east, is the centre of the social, political, and religious life of the men.
The Government has had very great difficulty in getting the people to bury their dead in a cemetery away from the village, as they preferred their old plan of burying under the houses. The people are greatly in dread of the sorcerers, who have the reputation for very powerful magic.
SKETCH MAP OF THE MEKEO DISTRICT
POKAO.
The inland district south of Hall Sound is a dry, hilly country, with sparse woods and green swards, where grow the aromatic plants so dearly prized for personal wear by the natives of the whole district. The physical conditions of this healthy land of eucalyptus and kangaroos do not appear to be favourable to agriculture, and so the inhabitants have become mainly hunters of the abundant game. On referring to a geological map, it is seen that this is a region of old volcanic rocks.
The Pokao people are an instructive example of the economic defects of a hunting existence. The necessity for getting fresh food every day fosters improvidence, for meat cannot be kept like yams or sago in this tropical climate. Hence these hunter folk are too lazy to send their meat to market. If the Mekeo people will fetch the meat they require, so much the better; if not, to use an expression employed nearer home, they “can’t be bothered.”
A hunting population, all the world over, is liable to periodic famines, and the Pokao people are no exception. But so ingrained is their laziness or indifference that they have been known to refuse to send for food which they could have had for nothing. They preferred to go hungry rather than take a monotonous tramp to obtain food.